A Dangerous Moment in Syria

This is a restless and an ugly moment in Syria, by any measure, and a hazardous one. On Friday, President Obama, at a press conference in Costa Rica, answered a question about American “boots on the ground.” He didn’t like to rule things out, he said—”circumstances change”—”Having said that, I do not foresee a scenario in which boots on the ground in Syria, American boots on the ground in Syria would not only be good for America, but also would be good for Syria. ” But there were a lot of other options, which he suggested could include military ones, directly or by proxy: “we’re not waiting. We’re not standing by.”

There is less and less waiting. Saturday there were reports that Israel had conducted an airstrike against weapons it believed were being transferred, maybe to Hezbollah, and, in a separate development, that Sunni families were fleeing the city of Bainas, on the coast, en masse. The Sunnis were afraid that they had lingered too long in a region of Syria that is mostly Alawite, as is Assad. They may have seen the pictures, said to be from al-Bayda, a nearby village, where something terrible seems to have happened in the last day and a half. As is more often the case than not in Syria lately, we do not know exactly what; the pictures and the provenance of the accounts are hard to verify, but there are estimates from the Syrian opposition of fifty or seventy-seven or a hundred dead, and images of a small child’s corpse. The State Department, in a statement Saturday, called the reports “gruesome,” involving both regime and militia forces, mortar fire, and whole families “executed.” It is not clear where the civilians now fleeing will go; Reuters quoted a source saying that some were being turned back at checkpoints.

The Israeli strike would not be the first one (just as al-Bayda would not be the first massacre); there were conflicting reports about what was hit—the Times spoke to Israeli analysts who mentioned Scud D missiles, and American officials who thought it might Fateh 110s—but it does not sound as if it involves chemical weapons. [Update: there were reports Sunday, not yet officially confirmed, of more Israeli strikes around Damascus.] An American official also told the Times that their weapons, whatever they were, had been in a warehouse near the Damascus airport. The implication was that they were ready to travel. The roads in Syria are already sites for weapons and people in motion, running away from the fighting or deeper into it. There is an impulse to help, and a sensible hesitation about what it means to bring in more guns, and more parties to a war. There may be no good answers, only routes that hold more and less danger.

Photograph by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP.

Amy Davidson Sorkin, a New Yorker staff writer, is a regular contributor to Comment for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.